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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Philadelphia Amtrak Derailment: 5 Dead; At Least 83 Dead in 7.3 Nepal Quake; Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired May 13, 2015 - 04:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[04:30:01] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news this morning -- at least five people killed, dozens more injured, six in critical condition. An Amtrak train derails in Philadelphia, passengers describing a horrific scene. Investigators are trying to figure out what went so wrong.

Live team coverage begins right now.

Welcome back to EARLY START, folks. I'm Christine Romans.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm John Berman. Thirty minutes past the hour.

I want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world.

The breaking news is devastating train derailment in Philadelphia. You're looking at live pictures right now. Five people killed. Officials say 53 hospitalized, including six this morning in critical condition.

Amtrak Northeast Regional Train Number 188 from Washington to New York crashed around 9:30 last night. It was carrying 238 passengers and five crew.

Seven cars -- and you can see them right now -- seven cars in the train's engine overturned or crushed or torn apart by the force. The cause at this moment: not yet known. However, officials say they do not believe there was any terrorism involved.

CNN's Rene Marsh live on the scene for us this morning.

Good morning, Rene.

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

I can tell you, all the survivors, they have been removed from the site. So, what this is right now is a recover operation. You can see this is still very much an active scene.

You just saw a police van pull in through the barricade there, and in the distance, you can see there's a fire truck. So, it's still a very, very active situation here.

Keep in mind, this all happened around 9:30 last night. We did see a short time ago, a medical examiner's van leave. We do know, as you mentioned, at least five people dead. But the mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, he was out here at the scene a few hours ago.

And in his words, had he said, at this point, they cannot, cannot say, that everyone has been accounted for. They're still going through the passenger manifest of this Amtrak train to make sure that they do have everyone.

Let's take a list ton what else they had to say about two hours ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR MICHAEL NUTTER, PHILADELPHIA: We do not know what happened here. We do not know why this happened. There is no information about that. We're not going to speculate about it.

DERRICK SAWYER, PHILADELPHIA FIRE COMMISSIONER: I've never seen anything so devastating. They're clearly in bad shape. You can see that they completely, completely derailed from the truck. They've been destroyed completely. The aluminum shell has been destroyed and they're overturned completely. Again, I don't want to speculate on the cause but it is a devastating scene.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARSH: All right. Well, at this point now, we know what happened, but we still do not know why and how. So, that's where this investigation will really zoom in on. We know that the NTSB will be here this morning. Later on this morning, they will be onsite.

Of course, once their investigators get on the ground here, they're going to be looking at a lot of critical components. They're going to be looking at the track. They're going to look at the train.

They're going to want to, at some point, once they're well and able to speak, talk to the crew members. We don't know what their condition is at this point. But investigators, it will be crucial for them to interview them.

They're also going to want to get the train's recorders because those recorders are going to tell investigators how fast this train was going, were brakes applied. So, those are all going to be critical pieces of information that they will need in order to figure out exactly what went wrong.

We're told as this train was going around a bend in this neighborhood, the Port Richmond neighborhood here in Philadelphia, that's when things went terribly wrong. Also investigating, we know the Federal Railroad Administration, they're here onsite. We saw them as soon as we arrived, so multiple investigations going on here.

BERMAN: Rene Marsh for us in Philadelphia. They had could know a lot very quickly. That is the nature of these rail investigations. Rene Marsh in Philadelphia, thanks so much.

ROMANS: All right. Passengers on Amtrak 188 described harrowing experiences, debris, luggage, laptops, even bodies flying through the compartments.

CNN's Sara Sidner is at the derailment site with the latest on that.

And, Sara, we've been listening to what the passengers were saying, looking up and seeing people trapped inside luggage compartments they've been thrown so far as the train lists 30 degrees. What is the scene there now?

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, Christine, when you listen to what people who are inside of one of these seven cars, that some of them toppled over.

One of them is almost unrecognizable. It is so damaged. It is crumbled almost into a ball in places, it looks completely awful. And then you start listening to what it was like inside of these cars, it's terrifying.

I do want to give you a look at what we can see because we've actually made it on to the tracks where this train had just left that curve that everyone has been talking about.

[04:35:04] It's a pretty tight curve. It's a pretty sharp curve and turn there. And you can see the last car there which is askew. It's kind of leaning to get right. And then beyond that, some of the more damaged cars, we've been watching all morning, as investigators have been really focusing in on that curve, and looking with their flashlights, a line of investigators, looking with flashlights at that curve in particular.

But I want to give you some idea of what it was like inside. The only people that can tell us that are those who were in there.

Let's listen in to a passenger on this train.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOAN ELFMAN, PASSENGER ON DERAILED AMTRAK TRAIN: We were just on the train and, all of a sudden, it started to shake. And we were in the front seat. And this huge red suitcase just came flying at me.

Our train was actually on its side, so it pushed me on to the side of the train. It hit my chest, I think I have a few fractured rib, I'm a nurse. But, you know, I tried to help anybody who is -- there's many injured people on the train, and they're very, very upset.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: In total, we're hearing about 50 people injured, with injuries like she described -- broken bones, contusions, bruises, all sorts of different things. But five people did not make it. They lost their life. And six people, we were told, are in critical condition, very scary moments on this train that derailed. Seven of those cars derailed. And it looks like a jumbled mess. Some

of the neighbors told us they could actually hear it in their homes. And it sounded like metal crashing and crunching on itself, Christine.

ROMANS: All right. Sara Sidner for us, thank you very much for that, Sara.

And again, an NTSB team, go team, on the way, that investigation will begin momentarily.

All right. Other passengers with equally harrowing experiences. Listen to this man's vivid description of the moment the train derailed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEREMY WLADIS, PASSENGER ON DERAILED AMTRAK TRAIN (via telephone): The train starts doing funny things. And then it just gradually gets worse and worse. And just like chaos erupts. And things start flying, stones, laptops, and then people, seats, trays start flying. You hear bumping and you hear like metal mangling.

But it happened so quickly, like you didn't even know what was going on. And the next thing I know, I look up, and there's two people in the luggage rack above my head. Two women got catapulted into the -- and we didn't -- I didn't even see it happen. I didn't even know.

And the train was like at a 30 degree angle down where I was. And I was trying to like wedged on to the window underneath a tray and the seat was turned. I mean, bags, shoes, everything, just flown, just complete chaos. And, you know, from when we got out --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Listen to that.

We also heard it from a man sitting in the back of the train. He said in just a matter of seconds, the smooth ride that he was enjoying just ended. And nowhere out of -- it just somewhere, nothing, felt as though the train were hitting something.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANIEL WENTRIN, PASSENGER ON DERAILED AMTRAK TRAIN (via telephone): I must have been about six rows from the back of the train, just sitting, everything was normal, and then, the major impact. Just by the time you come to the senses of what's happening, I'd been thrown on to the floor in the aisle. And just chaos, spinning around, the chairs are built to change direction, to go from one end to the other. So, they've all come loose. Chairs were flying around, people are flying around, bags -- pretty chaotic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Officials say there's no information yet on the cause of the crash, and an NTSB go team on the scene later this morning. A former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavo said investigators will certainly look at how fast this train was going.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY SCHIAVO, FORMER DOT INSPECTOR GENERAL (via telephone): The location of the cars and the fact that one is perpendicular, you know, it does give us clues already, and certainly, we don't know the cars. But given that they ended up in that situation, where it's perpendicular and it's very, very mangled, you know, that's not a slow derailment.

You know, it's hard to, you know, estimate that kind of speed, and it was headed into the curve. But that's an awful lot of damage if it was a slow moving train and it simply derailed off the track going around a curve.

So, the NTSB, as soon as they arrive and they're there -- I mean, they will have clues almost immediately.

[04:40:00] And they've just done this so many times. But the situation, the scene that you're showing right now on the screen, the one car is very mangled, and perpendicular to the others -- I mean, that's a little more than just derailment going around the curve.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: The governor of Pennsylvania Tom Wolf visited the site overnight to express his grief in the tragedy and support the huge rescue effort.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOVERNOR TOM WOLF (D), PENNSYLVANIA: It just sounds horrible. I mean, the human tragedy, the devastation, I can't imagine. We stand ready to help in whatever way we can. We're in support of what the city and Amtrak are doing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Amtrak responded this morning, saying, quote, "We're deeply saddened by the loss of life from Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188 that derailed north of Philadelphia Tuesday evening. We ask the news media to be respectful of our customers, our employees and their families."

Amtrak says individuals with questions about friends and family on this train, they should call the Amtrak incident hotline. It has also been pushing people to its blog which was overwhelmed with traffic, went down several times.

Today, there will be no Amtrak service today between New York and Philly. No Amtrak service between New York and Philly. And several other routes will have modified service.

We continue to follow the breaking news out of Philadelphia all morning long. Investigators trying to figure out what caused this deadly Amtrak derailment. Passengers now sharing their stories of helping one another, their stories of survival. We'll have more of that -- next.

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[04:45:04] ROMANS: Welcome back to CNN's breaking news coverage of a deadly train derailment in Philadelphia. Here's what we know right now. Five people, five passengers on that train are dead. Local hospitals are treating at least 136 passengers. Fire officials say six of those injuries are critical.

The city's fire commissioner stunned by the devastation at the scene. Listen to him describe the rescue effort.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAWYER: We used our hydraulic tools to get to the people who could not self-evacuate. There were several people who were trapped. Again, train cars are overturned. They're in horrible shape.

There's a bunch of debris down there. It's a dangerous situation for responder, even more dangerous for the riders down there, but we were able to get them out with hydraulic tools, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: One of the passengers who was able to walk away from the derailment said he still cannot believe that it all actually happen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAX ELFMAN, PASSENGER ON DERAILED AMTRAK TRAIN: I'm still like -- this kind of stuff feels like a dream, like how can this happen. You always read about things or see this on news, a plane crashes, a train derails, you never actually think it's going to happen to you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Another passenger Janna D'Ambrisi describing the moment her car went off the track. Now, there's no official cause for the crash but given what she experienced, she says the train went into the turn too quickly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JANNA D'AMBRISI, PASSENGER ON DERAILED AMTRAK TRAIN (via telephone): So, I was sitting in the second to last car on the right side of the train in the aisle seat, and I was reading my books, everything seemed normal. Suddenly, it felt like we were going a little too fast around the curve, is what it felt like, and then there was a jolt. And immediately, you could tell that the train derailed.

And there's wave of panic initially. I was thrown into a girl next to me sitting in the window seat, the train started to tip that way, to the right. People on the other side of the train started to fall on us.

But some people must have fallen above me, because somebody's calf hit me in the side of the head. So she must have landed in the luggage rack above me. But I just held on to her leg, and the girl next to me sort of bowed my head. And I was just kind of praying, like, please make it stop, please make it stop, because it felt like we were gliding along for a little while there.

And I don't know if it only felt that way or maybe only a few seconds, but I was just praying the train didn't tip any more. I was just thinking we were going to fall all the way on our side. But we did finally stop at the tilt, and everyone was screaming. So, I stood up, I realized I wasn't hurt. Thank God.

So, immediately, I was asking everybody around me, are you OK, are you OK?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: One of the first things people do when they get on a train, they unpack everything. You unpack your computer, take off your shoes. You get comfortable. It's just the last thing you are expecting. A team of NTSB investigators will be on the scene any minute in Philadelphia, to determine exactly what caused this train to go off the rail.

One of our experts tell us that speed is quite likely a factor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIAVO (via telephone): As soon as the NTSB downloads those train's black boxes, they have the speed of the train and all the controls of the train. They even have where, this is not a situation that will be significant to impact for them, but they even have when the train blow its whistle, and there's very specific Federal Rail Administration regulations about where you do that and the speeds.

And that black box is very much like an airplane black box, and that will have all the information. So we, literally, by the time they get this off the train and get it back and downloaded to D.C., by the afternoon, the NTSB will know. But that -- the mangling of that car looks like a fairly high speed derailment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Seven cars rather on train 188 completely derailed. Some of them ripped in half, overturned or badly shredded. Emergency crews, flash lights swarming the crash site into the night. Well over 300 police and firefighters on that scene you're watching there. They were there in minutes.

Listen to this Red Cross official explain the response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY TORNETTA, AMERICAN RED CROSS EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA: I have to say, you know, as I resident of the Philadelphia area, I'm so proud of the way our city responded. There's first responders everywhere, just doing an amazing job throughout the night. It's such a tragic situation. It's such a powerful thing everybody coming together and working together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: We'll stay on this. We're going to continue with the breaking news out of Philadelphia. Again, you're looking at live pictures right there, as they continue to look at the twisted wreckage of Amtrak Train Number 188. We'll stay on this all morning.

Plus, there is other news: dozens dead and a U.S. military helicopter missing after a devastating new earthquake in Nepal.

[04:50:05] We'll have the very latest from there, next.

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ROMASN: All right. Back to CNN's breaking news. The deadly Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia. Here's the very latest for you. At least five people have been killed. Local hospitals are treating at least now 136 passengers.

Fire officials say six of those injuries are critical. The Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188 traveled from Washington to New York when it derailed in Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia's mayor says what caused the derailment is so far unclear. What is clear, the scene was utter chaos.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NUTTER: We have train cars that are completely overturned on their side, ripped apart. It is a devastating scene down there. We walked the entire length of the train area, and the engine completely separated from the rest of the train. And one of the cars is perpendicular to the rest of the cars. It's unbelievable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Amtrak has set up a special hotline for people who need information on friends and family aboard that train. The train -- that number is 1-800-523-9101. And they've cross-referenced the manifest, right?

[04:55:01] And they think they have everyone accounted for here.

BERMAN: It already passed through Philadelphia, this train had. So, you would imagine that most of the people are from the New Jersey or New York area. We want to give you updated on this derailment throughout the morning.

I want to give you some of the other headlines right now.

At least 83 people are dead following the 7.2 magnitude quake in Nepal's border with China. Seventeen of the dead are in China. At least one of those killed was in China. And the rest in Nepal and that death toll could rise. A U.S. military helicopter also missing while supporting the relief efforts. Pentagon spokesman says the helicopter radioed that they were having some kind of fuel problem and lost contact. Search and rescue efforts are under way this morning.

ROMANS: Breaking news out of Pakistan this morning, police are saying six gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on a bus in Karachi, killing 42 people, wounding at least 20 others. That bus was carrying men, women and children from the Shiite sect. A sect that's often prosecuted by the extremists. A splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for that attack.

BERMAN: At least five killed in this train derailment. You're looking at pictures right now from Philadelphia. Investigators on the scene this morning. We'll find out what happened, what went wrong. We're live right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ROMANS: Breaking news this morning: a deadly Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia. At least five people killed, more than 100 others injured. Investigators on the scene are trying to figure out what went so wrong. We'll have live coverage of our big story begins right now.

Good morning. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.